Democrats Renew Push for Show Trials Prosecutions

Glenn Greenwald is outraged at the Eric Holder "trial balloon" over the Bush administration's wartime interrogations (via Memeorandum):

All other things being equal, individual CIA agents who brutalized detainees, using unapproved methods, ought to be prosecuted. If nothing else, our treaty obligations compel that. Even for a country that has rejected the idea of accountability as resoundingly as we have, it seems inconceivable to decide to prosecute nobody in the face of scores of detainee deaths. How can we know that we tortured to death numerous detainees and do nothing? If you were Eric Holder, would you want that decision attached to your name by history?

But just as was true for the Abu Ghraib abuses, many of the worst instances of detainee abuse cannot be extricated from - but rather are directly attributable to - the torture policies authorized at the highest levels of the government. To target low-level interrogators while shielding high-level policy makers would further bolster America's two-tiered system of justice, in which ordinary Americans are subjected to merciless punishment while the most powerful elites are vested with virtual immunity from the consequences of their lawbreaking.

Scott Horton, another extreme-left constitutional lawer, is also on the case with, "Torture Prosecution Turnaround?"

The outcome of such prosecutions is hardly in doubt. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which released an action memo in April, "Impeach Torture Architect Bybee," has basically already convicted top-Bush administration officials. The group's report, "Commission Finds President George W. Bush and His Administration Guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity," was written by terrorist-sympathizer Michael Rattner, and was co-sponsored by the revolutionary communist organization, Not In Our Name. (But see also, Mark Danner, "The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means.")

Emptywheel at Firedoglake see legs on this new push for investigations, going potentially to the top of the former Bush administration:

My take - one derived from some weeds - is that if Holder approves an investigation, it'll be unlikely to just take on low-level CIA interrogators.

... consider who we're talking about. We're not, actually, talking about low level CIA interrogators. We're talking about contractors. James Mitchell, to be exact. And if James Mitchell is not the psychologist/interrogator who acknowledged he had exceeded the limits set by John Yoo's Bybee Memo, but justified it by saying he had exceeded those limits (by using way more water, for longer time, and pressing on the detainee's gut) because those things make the simulated drowning technique "for real - and ... more poignant and convincing," then it's almost certainly someone who works for James Mitchell and probably used to work for the DOD entity that administers SERE.

Oh boy, that's some creepy subterraneanism. But as Wizbang points out:

The entire torture prosecution meme, and the Potemkin Panetta "lying to Congress" Theatre, is all part of a two scene drama: the rehabilitation of Nancy Pelosi and the diversion of attention from a failing Obama policy in multiple areas. The torture debate was settled months ago but the egos in the Democratic Congress and a sinking Obama presidency require a new distraction now that Sarah Palin is off the front page.

And Sweetness and Light, calling all of this the "Eric Holder show trials," adds that "no one has yet to enunciate a single law that was ever broken by these interrogations."

See also, Ace of Spades HQ, "Eric Holder: Hey, Let's Jail the People Who've Kept Us Safe for Eight Years."

More commentary at Memeorandum.

Photo Credit: ABC News, "Europeans Rally on May Day Amid Economic Worries" (AP/Dmitry Lovetsky).